Document Control
Good morning all! I recently got hired to manage the food safety program at a potato packaging warehouse. Their certifying body is Primus. Before this, I worked at a Mushroom Farm for 6 years assisted with their SQF program which is obviously a lot more extensive than Primus. The Mushroom Farm was the beginning of my food safety career and I always worked under someone. Whereas now I am managing and doing this by myself which is very scary but also very educating! One thing that kind of has me stuck is that I can't seem to find any sort of approved forms list or any sort of traceback to the development of the records. The only thing related to document control is the revision and the revision date on the documents but no record whatsoever of the revisions before. Is that okay? Primus is changing their version at the beginning of March anyway so should I just restart my revisions from 0 and create some sort of form to track revisions thereafter? Thanks in advance, it might be a dumb question but I'd rather ask than change everything when it's not necessary!
Hello, I was in the same situation as yourself back in 2015. We are not GFSI certified yet - I'm working on that within the next year or so. Anyways, when I asked our third-party auditor that same question, he stated to begin with "Version # 1" and under "nature of revision" to add "legacy document updated to comply with SQF Edition 8.
I'll see in the next year if this will hold up with SQF. Perhaps someone with better knowledge answer you. But so far, this has worked for us.
This is exactly what I needed! Thank you for your reply
Hello, I was in the same situation as yourself back in 2015. We are not GFSI certified yet - I'm working on that within the next year or so. Anyways, when I asked our third-party auditor that same question, he stated to begin with "Version # 1" and under "nature of revision" to add "legacy document updated to comply with SQF Edition 8.
I'll see in the next year if this will hold up with SQF. Perhaps someone with better knowledge answer you. But so far, this has worked for us.
I would make that a corrective action. You identified this during your internal audit.
Create the document control register.
Tip for PrimusGFS document control register. Code the documents to match the audit scheme. For example Module 1 Food Safety Management System. The first question is 1.01.01 is there a food safety policy?
The food safety policy document ID is 1.01.01
second questions 1.01.02 is there an organizational chart?
The organizational chart document ID is 1.01.02
Module 5 is GMP so the IDs start with 5.XX.XX
Module 6 is HACCP so the IDs start with 6.XX.XX
For the register, I would list in one column all of the audit questions ID #s, the second column would be the title of the Policy, SOP, or record that correspond with the question. Delete any audit questions that do not require a document. This will assist in ensuring you don't miss any policies/sop or records.